Palmer has been commanding officer of the Elm since July 2011 and will transfer to the Office of National Aids to Navigation School in Yorktown, Virginia.

Gomez is reporting from the Defense Health Agency at Coast Guard Headquarters where he was responsible for policy, operations and coordination related to the extension of medical benefits to the 9.6 million beneficiaries of the military health system.

The Coast Guard Cutter Elm is the fourth 225-foot ‘Juniper’ Class Seagoing Buoy Tender and is homeported in Atlantic Beach. The Elm’s crew has a primary mission of servicing more than 230 aids to navigation ranging from the North Carolina and South Carolina border to Shark River Inlet in New Jersey. The crew’s secondary missions include fisheries law enforcement, alien migration interdiction, ice breaking operations and oil skimming. The crew of the Elm earned a unit citation for serving with distinction as a skimming asset during the response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.